Your Website Can't Compete With This New Rule

1 - > so it's n no longer enough just to optimize your own website to get cited. 2 - > It's now imperative to make sure your brand is mentioned and vouched for by other external publications. 3 - > is dire. 4 - > If you run a company right now, no matter what you've done before, you might be invisible.

5 - > Luckily, for you and for me, we've got a man who really has a plan and a service that can solve 6 - > that. 7 - > I'm joined by Farzad Rashidi who's in Washington DC. 8 - > Farzad, welcome back. 9 - > Thank you so much for having me back on, Jim.

10 - > It's a pleasure. 11 - > now so many companies are becoming invisible. 12 - > And I know you to be an authority in this domain. 13 - > So I couldn't imagine anyone rather have.

14 - > What about this research that's showing that most companies are basically sailing out to sea with no lights on when it comes to 15 - > customers. 16 - > Absolutely. 17 - > So, know, that that's I don't think it's very surprising. 18 - > If you ask any LLM, hey, what are the best XYZ service or tool or product for my use case?

19 - > At max it gives you a dozen brands. 20 - > Uh and likely there are thousands of different brands that don't get ever mentioned and the answer. 21 - > So usually the customer research process starts from an LLM response. 22 - > So whether or not they're using their Chat GPT, Claude, or just typing in Google.

23 - > usually that initial list of research is generated by an LLM. 24 - > So if you're not in that initial list of five or ten or dozen uh brands, then usually you're not even in the entering the consideration stage at all. 25 - > so it's key to make sure you're mentioned at that um top of funnel. 26 - > And then obviously people do their own research to figure out what product to purchase.

27 - > But that that first step is key. 28 - > So tell us about Respona, the history of Respona, and how you're helping clients to solve this problem now of really LLM invisibility. 29 - > Sure thing. 30 - > So Respona in a nutshell uh helps brands show up in AI answers, like in Claude, ChatGPT, and Google AI overviews by getting them listed on product reviews, listicles, other 31 - > articles um that listed uh basically um the top brands in their space.

32 - > And uh the way we're accomplishing this is by reaching out to authority publications that are currently getting cited by these LLMs and then incentivizing them to promote your 33 - > brand and talk about your brand uh from a content piece that is optimized in order to get cited. 34 - > Um so that way you see that visibility score take off over time. 35 - > and I have found in the last month that an article that I wrote that has the top 14 video platforms for entrepreneurs is the number one source of traffic to my newsletter.

36 - > What is the LLM doing then in real time going out and checking all these websites like myunnoticedentrepreneur.com or fortuneentrepreneur.com? 37 - > Yeah, absolutely.

38 - > So what these LLMs do is that they usually are a neural network that has a cutoff when it comes to their training. 39 - > So you know, with the latest and best models usually have a cutoff point of a few months ago. 40 - > So their information inherently is not up to date. 41 - > So what all LLMs have done in order to battle that of that is that they basically have turned into a search engine.

42 - > So when you ask any uh questions that uh requires the model to know The latest information, what it does is that it conducts this process is called RAG, which 43 - > essentially is just searching the web and uh figuring out what other articles are currently uh that that they can read that's been published since after their training date 44 - > cut off, that they can reference in order to come up with an up-to-date and useful response. 45 - > So what brands can do when you ask it a question, for example, hey, what are the best um tennis shoes?

46 - > for playing tennis uh is that if you actually look at the model behavior is that he actually goes and reads usually dozens of sources, reputable sources in that space. 47 - > And there usually a lot of people think, oh, it's from other people's website like from our competitors' websites, from my own website. 48 - > Usually we see 85% are actually from external websites. 49 - > So they're so it's n no longer enough just to optimize your own website to get cited.

50 - > It's now imperative to make sure your brand is mentioned and vouched for by other external publications. 51 - > So that's a really, really key point for anyone uh that's contemplating this. 52 - > What Farzad has just said is that your own website really may not even need tending at all. 53 - > That you're really needing to do what in the old days was PR was to have the authority of a third party website.

54 - > Farzad, right? 55 - > So how does then link building and as you call it sort of digital brand mentions compared to what we would have called public relations in the old days. 56 - > Right. 57 - > Well the genus the the gist of it is that it's all follow the same principle.

58 - > You're trying to get external validation, right? 59 - > So it's it's one thing if I say, hey, we're the best for this, it means nothing. 60 - > So uh but when somebody else says it and they are an authoritative source in your space, that means something. 61 - > So that's the basis of how all of these search engines work back in the day when Google, you know, beat all the other search engines.

62 - > was by developing this algorithm called page rank. 63 - > So instead of just looking at the keywords on the homepage or the website, because uh you know you can easily manipulate that by keyboard stuffing. 64 - > And that's how Google became Google is by looking at other sources. 65 - > So this concept of Backlinks got into do.

66 - > So the more authoritative websites in your space link back to your website or mention you and talk about you, uh it essentially passes along what we call uh link equity or or 67 - > considered like a vote to popularity. 68 - > And that's what uh pushes the websites up in the search ranks. 69 - > Now the same principles also apply for LLM mentions, is that the more you're vouched for and talked about by other reputable publications, the more likely it is that you show up 70 - > in the answer.

71 - > But there are some nuances to that. 72 - > So I'm happy to dive into it uh if that makes sense. 73 - > Yes, please do. 74 - > So we've got a smaller brand, you know, the SME, for example, the entrepreneur.

75 - > what does that mean in terms of their brand onto one of these Because historically those bigger websites will only take 76 - > news or articles or mentions from big brands. 77 - > Mm-hmm. 78 - > Yeah, so that's an excellent question. 79 - > So a lot of people think that, oh, I need to get, like, for example, Forbes to mention me, uh, or I need to go on Reddit.

80 - > so if you actually look at the percentage of citations, for example, Reddit is uh right around 5% or less of the citations. 81 - > the vast majority of sources that get cited by these LLMs are actually not popular sources that you have heard of. 82 - > They're The reason why is that there's something called topical authority for a publication. 83 - > So when a website writes about anything and everything, like a news site like Forbes, they're not a topical expert on anything.

84 - > That website doesn't have a focus. 85 - > They're writing about lifestyle and celebrity net worth and and also B2B SaaS. 86 - > So the type of domains that we see to actually get cited by these LLMs are websites that are usually other companies. 87 - > They have a blog or they have a content piece published on a website that's writing uh about a topic that they're an expert of.

88 - > and and so those are the type of citations and mentions you want to go after. 89 - > It's not necessarily chasing after you know, just doing PR for the sake of like doing that study and and publishing it on on publications. 90 - > I I found little evidence and correlation between those. 91 - > and what I found that works well, and that's something that we help direct our clients to is by analyzing the current citation pool for LLMs.

92 - > being used by these LLMs and then you replicate what already works. 93 - > So I'm happy to dive into that. 94 - > Yeah, so I know we're getting a bit technical, but it's fascinating because it's changing the game entirely. 95 - > And one of the dimensions to what you said is that in the PR business, which you know I had for 25 years in agency, clients focused really on the high profile publication that 96 - > the CEO read.

97 - > alluding to or stating is that yeah, absolutely, sort of. 98 - > So you're you wrong direction? 99 - > Have I gone barking down the wrong? 100 - > Okay.

101 - > Yeah. 102 - > we usually see there are not news articles most of the time at all. 103 - > Like look at paid advertising, TV advertising, PR. 104 - > So when you whittle it down to SEO or GEO, that's what people call it, which is for search engine optimization, or some people call it generative engine optimization.

105 - > Um, that's a different marketing channel. 106 - > The way these engines work is basically if you want to show up in those answers, you need to go and be placed where they're looking. 107 - > So, what happens is that, and it varies usually based on the industry. 108 - > So, what you would need to do is to run the prompts you want to optimize for, like in your case, would be what are the best marketing podcasts for entrepreneurs.

109 - > You run that prompt through any of the LLMs you want to optimize for, and then Take a look at the citations that show you where they're pulling their answers from. 110 - > And then what you want to do is to replicate that citation pool. 111 - > So not to do any guesswork, is to actually go and see, okay, what are the type of domains and the type of content that the LLM is searching for? 112 - > So in that model's chain of thought, what are the questions it's asking?

113 - > What are some of the content pieces it's referencing? 114 - > And on what type of domains. 115 - > And then what usually happens is that a lot of people try to get themselves cited on those specific citations that they pull. 116 - > So they try to round reach, but obviously success rate on those are low.

117 - > so what we've seen that works really well is actually find similar publications that follow the same structure of keyword pattern and and authority, and then write a new piece 118 - > of content that follows the structure of that exist in citation. 119 - > So once these new articles go live and get indexed. 120 - > They end up replacing a lot of older citations, you see that visibility scoring go up over so a key part of what you're doing as a responder is helping people to understand which 121 - > publishing websites they need to be on because those are the ones that the LLMs are tracking.

122 - > Is that correct? 123 - > Is that right? 124 - > Yep. 125 - > Okay.

126 - > And you do that within the platform, presumably. 127 - > within Respona, people type in what their domain is, what their product is, and what their avatar is. 128 - > Is that right? 129 - > Yeah, so actually if you don't mind I could show you.

130 - > Uh so yeah, absolutely. 131 - > So I actually in preparation for our meeting, I have run a search for the Unnoticed Entrepreneur podcast. 132 - > So want to share? 133 - > Do you like to share screen?

134 - > good you can share screen. 135 - > Perfect. 136 - > that's great. 137 - > So basically I just put in your website here, theunnotice.

cc, and I put in some prompts here that the model suggested, like for example, what are the best marketing podcasts for 138 - > entrepreneurs? 139 - > you know, what business podcasts, tech practical branding and visibility teach, excuse me, practical branding and visibility strategies. 140 - > And then I put in the models you care about. 141 - > So that's Google, ChatGBT, Google AI overviews.

142 - > Now what we give you in the second step is your current state of visibility as a baseline. 143 - > So we sh I'm glad that for people that are listening, it's great. 144 - > For the people that are watching, you can see that it's pretty poor. 145 - > There's a lot of l room to grow here.

146 - > But yeah, absolutely. 147 - > So as you see, there's a lot of podcasts that are getting mentioned like marketing school, Neil Patel Masters of Scale, And and you deserve to be on there. 148 - > So essentially what we do is we run these prompts through the models, and then we take a look and see if they are mentioned, and we pull all the citations that the model's using 149 - > in order to drive that answer. 150 - > So a lot of it is like 13 best podcasts for entrepreneurs to listen to, best branding podcasts, et cetera.

151 - > And we enrich that by the type. 152 - > And so we see exactly the type of domain they are. 153 - > And then what we do in the last, so that's this is where a lot of tools stop, by the way. 154 - > So they're like, okay, great.

155 - > What am I doing with this information? 156 - > So what Respona does is that we actually run all these prompts and filter out these citations to the editorial links. 157 - > So for example, in this case, this is a article on Salesflare. 158 - > On top 20 podcasts or startup founders in 2026.

159 - > So what we're gonna do is we're gonna actually reach out to Salesflare and see if they'll be interested in adding you on there. 160 - > A lot of the times though, they're not interested. 161 - > So they don't respond, or they're you know, there may be a competing company. 162 - > So what we do in majority of cases, we actually find similar publications to Salesflare that match their metrics and keyword profile.

163 - > And then we write a new piece of content that follows the structure of the citation. 164 - > So it would be top twenty plus podcasts for startup founders in 2026. 165 - > And then we write an updated list that includes your podcast at the top, along with a backlink point into your website. 166 - > So it still carries that same traditional SEO benefit, but more importantly, has your brand.

167 - > Now, what we see, because those um publications are high authority, they basically have the opportunity to get re to replace a lot of the older citations because this LM is 168 - > always hungry for new updated pieces pieces of content. 169 - > That's the whole point of them even looking at the citations. 170 - > So that's how we see that visibility score tick up over time is by helping you get placed on these type of publications that get cited. 171 - > Farzad, that's fascinating.

172 - > for anyone obviously that's listening, this video will be on the YouTube. 173 - > And of course, Farzad will give you a link at the end of the show as well to connect with Farzad. 174 - > But what we've then got is a high domain authority website. 175 - > I know that my current website domain authority is 31, for example, right?

176 - > But it's not showing up on any of your, on any of the LLMs. 177 - > So it's somehow... 178 - > not being cited, even though it's in the top six in the UK and top 2 % worldwide of shows. 179 - > It's invisible, which is fascinating because although it's done its work in some domains, it's completely useless in others.

180 - > First of why would they not want to get an updated article? 181 - > Um well, Jim, how many emails do you get on a on a daily basis? 182 - > uh And actually I get them from people that want to place a backlink article on my website 183 - > and I've said no because I haven't really understood what was going to happen. 184 - > so there's also ignorance, right, on the behalf of the publisher.

185 - > Like me, you think, am I going to get hacked in some way, right, by publishing this? 186 - > So that's very interesting. 187 - > Right. 188 - > So usually success rate on just reaching out to the raw current citation pool is very has very limited success.

189 - > So that's a a very contrarian thing. 190 - > And unless you do it in practice, it it it differs from you know what you would think would happen. 191 - > So you're um basically when you do any sort of cold outreach to people that you have never heard of, the success rate usually hovers around one percent. 192 - > Yes.

193 - > So, if you have a handful, for example, you have 400 citations to reach out to, if you're lucky, you may be able to convert three or four of them to say yes. 194 - > But that will do nothing. 195 - > It's not enough to move the needle. 196 - > So, what we found that works well is to create a pool of opportunities for each one of those citations to find similar publications, write new pieces of content following the 197 - > structure, but then those new citations end up replacing a lot of older citations.

198 - > 45% of the citations usually sir uh basically cycle through every month. 199 - > So okay. 200 - > And it's that it's that's interesting. 201 - > That's an interesting statistic that 45 % are refreshing every month, which means two things.

202 - > One is it's never too late to start. 203 - > And the second is that you have to keep going. 204 - > Right? 205 - > You do have to keep going.

206 - > it's not a one-off strategy. 207 - > only company that is doing this. 208 - > So the more of your competitors that are following the strategy, then the more competitive your space gets and the more you have to um follow. 209 - > so it's definitely something that requires upkeep and something you have to do consistently over time.

210 - > Uh Just like any other marketing strategy. 211 - > It's not free to get placed on a organic search results. 212 - > but when you do make a work, you have an evergreen flow of customers coming to you that are already qualified and ready to purchase and they already have established trust in you 213 - > because they already have you know. 214 - > been recommended to you or recommended to them by by an LLM.

215 - > So usually the conversion rate on those leads are way, way higher than what you would get through ads or any other channel. 216 - > that's very interesting far. 217 - > So a couple of things there. 218 - > You mentioned cost.

219 - > You know, I looked up what value would be if I charged for the unnoticedentrepreneur.com uh and it was about 30 to $40 uh was the value that one of these LLMs gave me for my 220 - > domain for posting something. 221 - > uh to pursue this link building strategy. 222 - > How does that work?

223 - > Yep. 224 - > So that depends on how competitive the I would say the industry is. 225 - > And so what for us, what we do is we have a flat rate price per placement. 226 - > So we take care of the whole thing.

227 - > It's a done for you service from start to finish. 228 - > And the pricing is paid per placement. 229 - > So it's guaranteed placements. 230 - > It starts starts from $100 per placement and all the way up to $500 per placement.

231 - > And when you place an order, uh you can actually uh select. 232 - > the quality tier you like to get a placement on. 233 - > When we run our own analysis, we give you an action plan that gives you exactly how many uh brand mentions you need and what quality tier. 234 - > So it's not guesswork.

235 - > You're basically going off of a plan. 236 - > Okay, $100 to get one, but the ROI of that could be that you're then found in an LLM or do you have some target that you need to do five or six or 10? 237 - > Yeah, absolutely. 238 - > So there's no minimum.

239 - > Uh one thing uh so for each set of prompts, we when we run the analysis, we tell you exactly how many citations we need to go and replicate. 240 - > And and then we will calculate the total cost, you know, depending on uh how many prompts you want to optimize for, how many models you want to optimize for. 241 - > If you want to start with just one model, one prompt is much less expensive. 242 - > And if you want to shoot for the stars and go after more keyword or more prompts and more models and obviously it's gonna cost more.

243 - > so when it comes to Respona, we have a flat rate price per placement. 244 - > And then when you place your order or or when you create a campaign, we actually give you um how much exactly it's gonna cost to uh get ranked and and and maximize your visibility. 245 - > So your monthly budget essentially determines how long that's gonna be. 246 - > So if you're spending like a thousand dollars a month, it's gonna take a number of years.

247 - > You know, if you're spending you know, five to ten grand a month is gonna take a few months. 248 - > So that's again just for these set of prompts and these set of models. 249 - > but every business is different. 250 - > So if you if you're looking to just basically optimize for one or two prompts and in your small business, then you can start small.

251 - > And then if you wanna if you're a larger business with a bigger budget, you can go after uh much more competitive prompts. 252 - > It doesn't have to be that it's only for big players because if that's the case, then the playing field is completely not level anymore. 253 - > Right. 254 - > It's never been level.

255 - > uh bigger brands always take the cake. 256 - > Uh but but in terms of small businesses, what the competitive advantage you have is that you could go after some of the non competitive prompts. 257 - > You know, if you wanna compete for what are the best CRM in the market, yeah, Salesforce and HopSpot, they're gonna kick your butt. 258 - > but if you're going after, for example, hey, what are the best CRMs for home improvement businesses in the UK?

259 - > then that's a much more manageable thing to optimize for because then there are not the sales force of the world that are competing for that. 260 - > So you can definitely dominate that with a very small budget in a short period of time. 261 - > Farzad, I think you've hit on something really, really important there, which is the segmentation. 262 - > So that, as you say, your prompt can be as defined as possible for your ICP, even, I guess, down to geography and ICP and...

263 - > suppose it's almost infinitely filterable, your prompt, right? 264 - > Is that what we define as a prompt? 265 - > Yeah, so it would be a question and the main thing we're optimizing for is the intent, not that specific prompt because no two persons are going to be typing the same exact query. 266 - > So traditional search, you're optimizing for keywords.

267 - > Uh with with uh LLMs you're optimizing for intent. 268 - > So for example, if I'm optimizing for what are the best home improvement CRMs in the UK, now if somebody's asking an LLM, hey, you know, I run a window replacement company and I'm 269 - > based out of the UK, what are the best CRMs I should use? 270 - > it will be optimized for that as well. 271 - > So essentially we are optimizing for intent, not specific prompts.

272 - > but that would basically give us the guidance we need to go after the type of citations that will get you placed on those group of prompts. 273 - > That's very interesting. 274 - > And you also mentioned the need to optimize for different LLMs. 275 - > Do you want to just also just explain that dimension to this because that potentially means you could have the same campaign, but I guess certainly you've got Gemini, Claude, 276 - > GPT, Copilot, and then possibly Manus if you're going down that path and Grok.

277 - > Right. 278 - > So. 279 - > Yeah, absolutely. 280 - > I mean we usually recommend Google AI overviews, Claud and Chat GPT.

281 - > And they're usually the main ones we're gonna optimize for. 282 - > But obviously when you do take a look at responses from like Perplexity, copilot, etc., they also uh usually follow similar patterns of citations. 283 - > So they end up having very they work in very similar ways.

284 - > But if you care about certain models, that usually ends up um determining the tracking and determining that North Storm metric. 285 - > So if you care about showing up in Chat GPT and Claude and Google AI algorithyms which is what most people use, usually uh that would also help your perplexity to go up as well. 286 - > So it's it's they kinda help each other as kind of a tide that raises all. 287 - > Okay, good.

288 - > it's not as though you're having to spend on one platform and another one is a Greenfield campaign. 289 - > Okay, that's fantastic. 290 - > Because when you and I spoke a couple of years ago, you kindly gave me access to RISMO and my own admission was I couldn't really figure out 291 - > how it worked. 292 - > So the human, the loop.

293 - > in this case, which is why now I'm still at zero, of course, on your metrics. 294 - > What help do you actually give your clients to figure this out or not to figure it out just to get the result? 295 - > Absolutely. 296 - > We definitely struggle with that.

297 - > We know when we had a uh do it yourself average software, you know, you said had to hire staff that knew what they were doing and you had to, you know, manage them and use it on a 298 - > daily, and it's a lot of work. 299 - > So what we did at Respona last year is that we developed this in AI and also with the network we built, we actually built this into a done for you productize service. 300 - > So you can kind of kind consider it like a vending machine for brand mentions.

301 - > So you can go in there and you're like, I want one listical mention on a publication of this quality tier. 302 - > And we take care of the whole thing. 303 - > So we filter out the publications, we go after them, we know what to say. 304 - > We already have relationships with a ton of them.

305 - > And also write the content that is optimized and get your brand placed from A to Z and it's done for you. 306 - > And then it ends up being way cheaper than you trying to do an in-house because when you have to when you take into account your time, the publisher fees, and software 307 - > tools you need, it ends up being significantly more expensive. 308 - > Like one case study actually I like to highlight if you scroll all the way up at the top of the page is with Opus Clip.

309 - > And so yeah. 310 - > Absolutely. 311 - > So so Opus goes on at Respona.com There are some case studies here.

312 - > Do you want to talk about the Opus Glip one? 313 - > Because that's a pretty impressive headline. 314 - > Yeah, that's that's the newest one. 315 - > So they came to us last year and they were they were they had some foundation level visibility, but they were nowhere near the top.

316 - > So we help them now rank number one in their space when it comes to the group of uh prompts that are relevant to them. 317 - > is AI video editing is a very competitive space too, right? 318 - > Yes, yes, indeed. 319 - > And then basically, what we helped them do is basically to analyze the citations for their target prompts, and then we created brand mentions for them on reputable publications that 320 - > follow the patterns of those citations and then now they're ranked number one in their space and also added about a hundred thousand to the monthly visitors each month because 321 - > these tradition these um Brand mentions there still do follow back links to help with your traditional SEO.

322 - > So you're kinda hitting two birds in one stone. 323 - > So not only you're increasing your brand visibility and AI answers, but you're also showing up in organic search as well as in Google other searches as well. 324 - > You've got that's Opus clip. 325 - > Then you've also got here some agencies using the product, I guess, to serve their clients and matchmaker, which we know of course is in the podcast space.

326 - > They've got a 90 % uh reduction in the time it took to do outreach. 327 - > So that's been a lot quicker, right? 328 - > And then also you've got a fitness network, Generation Iron, they've got a 100,000 monthly organic traffic increase in six months, which 329 - > You know, for a local business is a significant uplift, isn't it Farzad? 330 - > I had a thought.

331 - > Yeah, absolutely. 332 - > So they're they're a they're a global brand, so they're not a local business. 333 - > Again, these numbers might look daunting for a small company and I might be listening. 334 - > we have companies that are one person shows and they're happy to dominate, you know, they they're happy to get a few hundred visitors to their website a month.

335 - > And we have global brands that spend over a million dollars a year with us, and agencies that you know sort of upsell what we do and then resell to their clients. 336 - > So we have people from all walks alike that use the same system. 337 - > Again, the fundamentals are the same. 338 - > If you're a bigger brand, you're just going after more competitive prompts and keywords.

339 - > And if you're a smaller brand, you're going after smaller, less competitive niches. 340 - > How would a founder start this process? 341 - > Yeah, absolutely. 342 - > So usually a good starting point is to start with a small test order just to try out the system.

343 - > So what my recommendation is always is to start with a small test order. 344 - > Let us build a few listicles for you, kind of go through the process. 345 - > It's gonna cost maybe a f few hundred dollars, but that will give you the confidence to know if that's the type of service you wanna utilize. 346 - > And then if so, then we have you know, obviously AI visibility campaigns that you can run on recurring basis that 347 - > basically helps to put together a more long term plan.

348 - > But usually a good starting point is to go in there, submit a small test order, just let us build a couple of listicles for you so you get exactly what uh we are gonna give you. 349 - > Okay, and we've talked really sort of more B2B. 350 - > What about companies that are in the B2C space, that maybe don't have a website, but maybe have a product, you know, like uh my wife has teapots that she imports from China, but 351 - > they're only on Shopify. 352 - > So can you help with that kind of company as well?

353 - > Yeah, absolutely. 354 - > So when it comes to e commerce, I actually went through this last night. 355 - > Like I've been playing tennis for a few years and I wanted to find a new pair of tennis shoes 'cause I've been happy with mine, but I've been looking for a new uh pair and I was 356 - > like, Let me do some resource. 357 - > So I just asked Claude, Hey, find me the best tennis shoe for my you know, for a male twenty eight year old.

358 - > and and so it and it gave me an option and I actually put an order immediately. 359 - > I didn't even do any more research. 360 - > I just trusted it blindly and then place to order. 361 - > So that's the type of uh product that obviously it uh again, if their customers are searching and asking, Hey, I want teapots, beautiful teapots, like where would I buy one?

362 - > Um, then that would be something that could be beneficial to them. 363 - > Obviously I'm pretty confident that's probably a little less competitive than tennis shoes so they it might not require as large of a budget as you know, probably Asics 364 - > a Adidas has to spend in order to show up in those answers. 365 - > okay. 366 - > um So what's coming to me a couple of things.

367 - > One is that this isn't really optional. 368 - > Everyone has to think about this off site visibility, right? 369 - > That the old days that you needed to make sure your own site was perfectly SEO'd with new articles and probably a nice logo and you worried about the fonts and so on. 370 - > That that's not the place to be worried.

371 - > anymore. 372 - > right that we and that we then need to be generating quality content for someone else to be willing to house it right and with that content are you writing that with AI or are you 373 - > writing that as humans or is that a mixture Yeah, everything we do is a make sure humans and AI. 374 - > Uh AI is great at certain things. 375 - > Uh it's not out of point yet to deliver the type of quality that we look for.

376 - > Um so we definitely have uh humans at every step of the process that quality share everything. 377 - > so uh yeah, so that's why uh we want to make sure that you know every customer is happy with all the deliverables. 378 - > So we have a team built out to make sure everything is double checked. 379 - > OK.

380 - > And I'm assuming this is multilingual as well, right? 381 - > The same principles apply regardless. 382 - > What about video and images? 383 - > Is off page search only text or is it also applying to your YouTube videos and other formats?

384 - > Yeah, absolutely. 385 - > YouTube videos definitely uh get cited by LLMs. 386 - > Social links like Reddit also get listed. 387 - > but usually they're a very small minority of uh mentions.

388 - > The vast majority of them are gonna be those editorial pieces that I mentioned. 389 - > Um but that said, you know, it doesn't stop you from creating YouTube videos, doesn't stop you from engaging in social. 390 - > So again, there's these are other marketing channels that help, but the vast majority of the work, I know it's kinda 391 - > like eighty twenty, is gonna be mainly working on those external citations and and brand mentions. 392 - > authority website to have like an editorial website?

393 - > I'm just thinking about the unnoticedentrepreneur.com and I have 145 articles on there that I've painstakingly written uh over the last few years. 394 - > Is the opportunity for people who are entrepreneurs to actually build out a website that's almost in parallel to their business website, which includes their own 395 - > products and listicles that becomes a source of backlinks. 396 - > Is that something that people are thinking about as a strategy?

397 - > Usually having one more site is more trouble than it's worth because one citation is not gonna do anything. 398 - > so having us invest that much time and effort building out another website, um, you're better off just reaching out to other publications that So that's usually uh not something 399 - > I would recommend. 400 - > I would edit this question out of the podcast then. 401 - > That was a dumb question.

402 - > All right, it was just a thought. 403 - > Okay, so far as I said, it sounds as though everyone has to think about this, that Respona has got a product, and I've seen it because I remember a couple of years ago, you were 404 - > doing link builder. 405 - > sounds like now you're doing brand authority and it's really moved on quite a bit. 406 - > As an entrepreneur, just share with us.

407 - > What's been a learning in the last couple of years uh with the changes that are coming in with AI? 408 - > What's your experience and your advice to entrepreneurs that are grappling with what's happening? 409 - > is completely getting revolutionized. 410 - > And one thing that we've seen a lot of success with is product type service.

411 - > Uh I think Sequoia just put out an article says the next trillion dollar company is a software company that's masquerading as a service firm. 412 - > So essentially, um people want outcomes and nowadays with AI and and in our opinion, still humans are important as well, can deliver the outcome in a uh 413 - > systematized and productized way. 414 - > And that's a much better uniconomics for the business, a much better experience for the customer. 415 - > So having a service, it's got outcomes that are well defined and clearly defined for the buyer.

416 - > Okay, that's fine. 417 - > And I can see that. 418 - > And that's really what you've done with Respona, right? 419 - > And you've managed to make it into a huge success.

420 - > Farzad, yeah, I'm gonna ask you, what do you think's coming next with AI? 421 - > You've talked about the productization, but what do you think is coming next? 422 - > I think we're all gonna lose our jobs sooner or later with the way things are progressing. 423 - > it's just not true.

424 - > I I'm actually an AI optimist. 425 - > I I think that um rate of GDP growth is going to explode, much like it did with the invention of the computer and um and and electricity. 426 - > Uh so I think this is definitely one of those pivotal moments in history where we're gonna look back and and look fondly on because I think it's a development that 427 - > is going to improve humans I would say well beings in terms of medicine, in terms of the economy, uh significantly like we've never seen before.

428 - > So I I I'm very optimistic and I'm very excited for the future. 429 - > but again, people disagree with me. 430 - > Uh I guess nobody really knows what's gonna happen. 431 - > So we have to wait and see.

432 - > But uh my opinion, if you don't know what's gonna happen, better hope for the best and hang tight. 433 - > Well, I think as you said, it's a sea change, right? 434 - > In the same way that electricity or, you know, the internet or mobile phones and before that, even the printing press and tractors, you know, that came in, the mechanization of 435 - > farms created huge dislocation, but then much greater yields in crops from the same amount of land. 436 - > And some people no longer worked on the land, but then they worked in other economic areas that meant that the economies were able to grow.

437 - > But it does require everyone to be flexible and to innovate, which is plainly what you and Respona have been doing. 438 - > Yeah, absolutely. 439 - > I appreciate the the kind words. 440 - > We're doing our best, so fingers crossed, see what happens.

441 - > we can see great results. 442 - > Farzad if people want to contact you and connect with you, how can they do that? 443 - > Uh, best way to contact us is via LinkedIn. 444 - > So my name's Farzad Rashidi and there aren't a ton of us out there.

445 - > So uh definitely a great way to get in touch with me there. 446 - > And then also our website's Respona.com That's R E S P O N A, Respona dot com. 447 - > If they want to learn more, they're welcome to visit there.

448 - > Wonderful. 449 - > You've shown me how poorly I'm doing on my own SEO, for which I'm grateful and obviously a little bit embarrassed. 450 - > But I'm grateful for you coming on the show and really educating me and my friends here on how we can survive. 451 - > Because the reason I thought it was so important to have this conversation is because a lot of smaller companies and bigger companies, if they are invisible to LLMs.

452 - > the leads will dry up. 453 - > and that source of new business has been really fundamentally important to so many companies, especially all those ones that are doing remote work. 454 - > So that's why I really wanted to talk with you about how brand mentions are being affected by LLM. 455 - > So thank you so much for coming on and sharing.

456 - > It is my pleasure. 457 - > Thank you for having me on, Jim. 458 - > It's it's great to catch up. 459 - > Yeah, it really is.

460 - > So as always, I'll put all the details in the show notes and I'll include Farzad's contact details and just encourage you to have a think now about your own strategy. 461 - > It's no longer enough to have a pretty website and to believe that you're going to be found. 462 - > As we said at the beginning, over 90 % of businesses are potentially invisible. 463 - > The upside of that is if you're in the 10%, you have the possibility to get the other 90 % business.

464 - > So as with all of these things, as we said in China, every crisis is also an opportunity. 465 - > Thank you for listening to this episode of The Unnoticed Entrepreneur with me, your host Jim James. 466 - > Until we meet again, encourage you to keep on communicating.